In July THE INSIDE was cancelled with the last
episode aired on July 13th. There were 13 episodes filmed in all
and rumors are circulating that perhaps all the episodes will be
eventually released on a DVD. According to Zap2It, FOX Entertainment
President Peter Liguori takes full responsibility for the failure of
the series. Liguori says, ""I'll take the heat on how that show as scheduled. I
think if I could rethink that decision, the way to have premiered
that show would have been a bit earlier, right on the heels of
'24's' finale, right on the heels of 'American Idol's' finale."
Instead, "The Inside" premiered on Wednesday, June 8 and promptly
fell off most viewers radar, despite a strong cast and clever
writing.

Brian Bellmont of MSNBC wrote a commentary on July 7th
called "Gloomy, moody shows brighten summer TV" and this is what
he had to say about THE INSIDE:

You want dark? “The Inside” is
murkier than a sludge-filled sewer. On paper, it’s “Law and Order:
Serial Killers,” a run-of-the-mill cop show about the FBI’s Los
Angeles-based Violent Crime Unit. But in the hands of quirkmeister
Tim Minear (“Angel,” “Firefly,” “Wonderfalls”), “The Inside” is
“Se7en”-lite, an unapologetically dark and moody look at sickos,
psychos, and the people who track them down.

Front and center is Rebecca Locke (Bridget Fonda look-alike Rachel
Nichols), a fresh-faced, doe-eyed new recruit with some firsthand
experience dealing with violent offenders. Turns out she was
kidnapped as a child by just the kind of guy she and her new
colleagues are after. Just what kind of damage did her experience
inflict? As the episodes unfold, viewers are getting plenty of clues
that Locke’s flawless skin may be holding together a scarred,
unstable core. Peter Coyote adds a menacing layer as the rogue
unit’s enigmatic boss, who may be more interested in solving crimes
than making sure his agents come out of their investigations
physically — and psychologically — in one piece.

It took until the fourth episode — written by “Buffy” alum Jane
Espenson — for the show to really gel into a solid mix of black
humor and piano-string tension. But if you want to check out this
moody hour, you’d better act fast. Online buzz — including Minear’s
own Web site — is already sounding the show’s death knell.

_______________________________________

Episode 1 - "New Girl in Town" airing June 8
An FBI Violent Crimes Unit (VCU) profiler is murdered by the serial
killer the VCU has been trying to capture. Rookie Agent Rebecca
Locke is asked to join the team and help them find the murderer,
even though she lacks field experience. She doesn't know that she
was chosen by Supervisory Special Agent Virgil "Web" Webster (Peter
Coyote). Nor does Rebecca know that Web knows her secret - she was
held captive as a child. This experience gives the novice profiler a
different type of insight into the minds of both the perpetrators
and their victims.

Episode 2 - "Old Wounds" airing June 15The VCU is after another serial killer when Paul's former
co-worker, a federal prosecutor, is murdered. They suspect their
prime suspect meets his victims at an S&M club. Rebecca is attracted
to one of its regulars.

Episode 3 - "The Prefiler" airing June 22When a spate of murders targeting future serial killers start
piling up, the VCU team find themselves matched against a cunning
profiler who executes these would-be killers in the same way they
would have killed their victims.

Episode 4 - "Everything Nice" airing June 29
When an eight-year-old boy is found murdered in a swimming pool
in an exclusive gated community, Web pits his VCU team against one
another with Rebecca believing that she has found a bad seed.

Episode 5 - "The Loneliest Number" airing July
6 When the VCU team investigates a series of suicides, they
discover them to be murders linked to a suicide hotline. Meanwhile,
Paul (Jay Harrington) suspects that Web's influence over Rebecca
(Rachel Nichols) is growing stronger and may lead to fatal
consequences.

Episode 6 - 'Thief of Hearts" airing July 6 Paul re-lives his first case under Web when a serial killer
imprisoned for removing the hearts of his female victims is released
because additional victims turn up bearing his killing signature
while he is behind bars.

Episode 7 - "Declawed" airing July 13With Web under investigation, an agent with a grudge against him
leads the team after a ritualistic serial killer whose MO includes a
stun gun and the removal of victims' fingernails.

Some
great reviews on
Coyote's role:

Nancy
Franklin, The New Yorker: The new Fox
Wednesday-night drama, “The Inside,” about an F.B.I. profiler whose own
personal history makes her all too suited for the job, wastes no time
playing its trump card—and that card is not the profiler. It’s Peter
Coyote, in the role of Virgil Webster, her boss at the Violent Crimes
Unit in Los Angeles—an unsmiling, manipulative man with what would pass
in polite company for a cruel streak. Coyote has always had a strong
presence on the screen, both in movies and on TV. He didn’t start acting
until he was almost forty—he was, and still is, a broadly engaged
political activist—and perhaps his full life as a human being is what
makes him seem so grounded as a performer. He comes across as not
needing the attention the camera provides, and so the camera willingly
gives it to him. He’s a tall, trim tree, and still good-looking at
sixty-two. And then, tying it all together, there’s that voice: it’s
measured and sane yet passionate, serious but not stern or judgmental,
warm but not gooey—and, amazingly, though Coyote couldn’t possibly be
unaware of the persuasive power of his instrument, he doesn’t seem to be
in love with the sound of it. Television advertisers know that you would
buy anything from this man: in addition to the dozens of narrations
Coyote has done for documentaries and live TV broadcasts, he has had a
very successful career doing commercial voice-overs.

Jeffrey
Sisk, Daily News:Rookie FBI
Agent Rebecca Locke (newcomer Rachel Nichols) is the latest member
of the Los Angeles-based Violent Crimes Unit headed by shady
Supervisory Special Agent Virgil Webster (a wonderful Peter
Coyote)... The cast - especially Coyote, Harrington and Nichols - is
uniformly strong, though Webster may well be the worst boss ever.
With his apparent disregard for the well-being of those who work for
him, a mutiny seems likely.

Joy Press, Village Voice:
Buried among the dozens of throwaway reality shows cluttering up the
summer schedules is one scripted program with a serious pedigree. The Inside (Wednesdays at 9 on Fox), a stylish and creepy
addition to the violent crime-solving genre, boasts a sterling staff
of writers and producers from shows like Buffy, The
X-Files, and 24. And although the series theoretically
revolves around a blonde novice FBI agent named Rebecca Locke
(Rachel Nichols), the real attraction is co-star Peter Coyote, who
plays her Machiavellian supervisor Virgil "Web" Webster. Web takes
only the most emotionally punishing cases, exploiting his own
employees' vulnerabilities; his relationship with Rebecca promises
to be particularly twisted. Coyote explains in a telephone
interview, "It's not a lab show. You don't have people saying,
'Let's flush this with five cc's of dexothorpan.' This is about
unexpected turns the human mind can take. Each character has
personal and ethical limits, except Web. Just when you think he has
rendered himself completely corrupt, it turns out he's ahead of
everybody."

Coyote spent many years pushing limits in the counterculture—as a
member of the '60s anarchist group the Diggers and a denizen of
various communes. He remains a political activist, regularly
supporting lefty causes and documentaries. So why does he end up
with so many cop and sheriff roles? (In last season's USA miniseries
The 4400, he even played a Homeland Security chief.) "For some
reason, casting people and directors see me as the Robert Vaughn of
my generation," he says dryly. "I guess it's just an irony of
history." But he's enjoying The Inside, not least because of his
longtime interest in serial killers. "I spent a lot of my life
hanging around outlaws, some of whom were extremely dangerous—a few
were actually murderers. These are people who don't have internal
restraints, and I think it's fascinating to look at where the
difference is between them and me. To find the line I refuse to
cross

Kat Parr, TV
Squad:Peter Coyote has a huge resume, and if you knock out the
B-list, there's still E.T., Erin Brockovich, and a
slew of suspense films that gift him with appropriate proportions of
irony and gravitas.

Jonathan V.
Last, Weekly Standard- The
Inside has many virtues, not the least of which is an
embarrassment of acting riches in the cast. In addition to Coyote's
cool devilry, there's Adam Baldwin's congenital malice as Danny Love
and Katie Finneran's pitch-perfect Melody Sim rounding out the
squad. But the show's most important virtue is its sense of
off-kilter mystery - just a few episodes in we can tell that not
everything is quite right with The Inside. There is the vaguest hint
of the supernatural hanging about the show. Not quite Lost,
not quite Twin Peaks, not quite The X-Files, there
are, nonetheless, larger forces at work in Virgil Webster's office.
Let's hope The Inside survives so that we can find out what
they are.

Jason Davis, Cinescape - Veteran actor Peter Coyote
brings an interesting ambiguity to Virgil Webster, who seems, in
many ways, to be just as dangerous as the monsters he pursues.

Aaron Barnhart, Kansas City
Star:Coyote brings an almost unbearable heaviness of being to his part,
which creates enough believable tension with all his agents to
propel “The Inside” forward.

Alan
Pergament, Buffalo News:
Coyote, a veteran film and TV actor with a powerful voice heard on
many a commercial, could play this cold role in his sleep. He is far
from the caring boss we've grown to love on CBS dramas, and we learn
next to nothing about his history.

Mike Hughes,
Honolulu Advertiser:
This tough and tense series about an FBI unit
investigating violent crimes is the cure for summer blandness. At
the core is Rebecca Locke, played well by Rachel Nichols. She's a
young FBI agent with a past that seems, at first, eerily vague. Her
new boss is Virgil Webster, who is played by the always-terrific
Peter Coyote. This is a fascinating character, almost in the league
of Fox's Gregory House. Webster might seem to lack a heart or a
soul. He'll risk the lives of others to do his job. He's terribly
good at it — and he may have seething emotion under the surface.

Victor
Balta, Daily Herald:Webster is played with an unsettling brilliance by Peter Coyote
("The 4400"). Webster is seemingly always a step ahead of his
subordinates and doesn't necessarily appear to have their best
interests in mind.

Tom Jicha ,
Sun
Sentinel: Peter Coyote effectively portrays Webster as a cranky, controlling,
results-oriented superior officer, whose regard for his squad
members is based on what they can do to make him look better. He's
an off-putting individual -- think House as a cop -- but he
does something in the final act likely to endear him to fans of this
genre.

Mark A.
Perigard, Boston Herald:
He picks
his operatives because he's aware of their emotional problems and
he's more than willing to exploit their weaknesses to capture the
bad guys. This creepiness gives ``The Inside'' an edge the other
procedural shows don't have. Coyote summons up the Cigarette Smoking
Man without the devilish nicotine fix.

Robert Philpot,
Star Telegram:The eccentric Coyote, by the way, could play this role in his sleep,
but he's one of the elements that keeps the show awake.

Jonathan Storm,
Philadelphia Inquirer:The
Inside departs from most of the grim autops-a-thon procedurals
that ooze over the TV landscape, spending time dissecting its
central characters. Who are they? Why were they chosen by the
bewilderingly unemotional unit chief, played enigmatically by Peter
Coyote, who is so archly juicy in these kinds of roles?

Mike Kelly,
Toledo Blade: Coyote, a veteran character actor, brings a stern-faced strength and
gravity to his role, and a bit of a sinister quality as well. He's
not your typical gruff-but-goodhearted TV police commander, and it's
easy to imagine that he might have a few dark secrets of his own.

Rob Owen, Pittsburgh Post Gazette:The most intriguing aspect of "The Inside" is the creepy Web Minear
has woven with Coyote as the spider at its center. Is Webster a
good-guy boss or a master manipulator who's using Locke for her
talents?

Laura Urbani, Tribune Review:
Coyote does a good job of
portraying a shady bureaucrat, a role he practiced on "The 4400."

Tim Goodman,
San Francisco Chronicle:
If Coyote actually had this role in a more believable series -- say,
on CBS -- he'd be looking at five highly rated seasons and
syndication.

Eric Berlin,
Blogcritics.org: The old crotchety boss is given a nice twist by way of Peter Coyote
in the role of Virgil “Web” Webster. The character arc of the show
will likely focus upon the reason that Web selected each member of
the elite team. He has, we’re told, an ability to pick assets and
then control them to suit his needs.

FOX FACT SHEET -

“Do you understand what it would mean to work for me? The things you’ll
see? The places you’ll be required to go?” – Webster

“I’ve already been to those places.” – Special Agent Rebecca Locke

“You only think
you have.” – Webster

Special Agent REBECCA LOCKE (Rachel Nichols), just two years out of
Quantico and confined to a statistical analyst position in Washington,
DC, is determined to break free of her routine, yet safe, desk job and
venture out into the field to tackle the FBI’s most dangerous
assignments.
Rebecca’s drive catches the attention of famed agent VIRGIL “WEB”
WEBSTER (Peter Coyote), the head of the FBI’s Los Angeles Violent Crimes
Unit (VCU), a rogue division where a team of agents tackle the most
psychologically taxing and physically threatening cases. When a spate of
serial killings leads to the death of one of their own, Webster hires
the rookie to replace their dead profiler. While exceptionally good at
her new position, Rebecca’s skills stem not only from her training, but
a secret she is keeping – she was once a victim herself and her
kidnapper is still at large.

Agent PAUL FATTORE (Jay Harrington) is married
and the conscience of the department, who learns of Rebecca’s secret and
is determined to protect her from Web – a man he believes will go to any
length to solve a crime, including putting his own agents at risk.
Rounding out the team are DANNY COULTER (Adam Baldwin), an imposing
ex-Marine, tactical team leader and a bit of a hothead

THE INSIDE explores the intricacies and complications of investigative
work, as well as the personal sacrifices required of Rebecca and her VCU
teammates as they move from one investigation to the next. The mystery
of who these agents are, and why Web has hired each of them, has really
only just begun.